December 2019 Community Update!
Hello Community!
I hope you all are well! I cant believe the end of the year is upon us. My kids are out of school and Ill be heading up to Massachusetts to spend time with my family. I wish you and yours a happy holiday season.
As discussed in the November update, well be making a monthly summary post of what weve been up to since the last update. Heather, Hope, Obs, Cris and I have been working on a number of items and we have also been working closely with the ambassadors. We will outline details in this post!
Culture Comment:
Ive had the opportunity to spend more time in the community this last month - talking with many of you, chatting in LSR, and spending time with our leaders. Before saying anything else, I want to highlight a couple of key strengths I see in our community. First, I see people genuinely looking out for one another. Knowing one another, seeing one another, and authentically helping one another. I see this happening across the board. It is beautiful! A second key strength I want to highlight is the deep competence. The awareness of how things work at present, where the challenges are, and how they can be made to work better. Thank you all for this smart, hard, and patient work!
Team + Community Leadership Alignment:
The first thing we did at the start of the month was complete an overall community audit of all that we are doing across the community, and our collective strengths and weaknesses (Thank you to all for completing the survey! Please see a summary from @heather225 below).
We started by identifying some key fundamental challenges we want to solve. Here they are:
--Too much distance between team and community - The team is working on one thing and the community is working on something else and there is limited communication about all that is happening across domains.
--Limited alignment between team and community goals - no overarching north star or goal that we are all working towards.
--Duplicative work - sometimes people working on similar projects without others knowing.
--Things falling through the cracks - missing things and not re-surfacing them because we were distracted by something else
Next, we reviewed all the work that we are doing and realized that there are 3 key domains (or teams): Quality, Safety, and Engagement. We have team members and community leadership that play different roles and carry different responsibilities, but almost all of them fall under these 3 domains. This is helpful to know because it allows us to identify goals - or ways we want to most help people and the community - across the different domains/teams.
We then put our heads together and came up with a north star goal. The north star is a star in the north that does not change position. People to use it to know where they are at present and where they are going. It guides people and shows them the way.
Our North Star: Increase Quality, Safety, and Trust Across the Community
This is the goal we are all pointing towards. All of our individual efforts, team efforts, and overall community efforts will all be aligned so we can collectively move ourselves towards this overarching goal. We are working more on this now and will share more details in the next update.
3 Key Things
We also launched the 3 Key Things Initiative. The goal was to help share what is happening across the team and community so we can better support one another. It has been a great and growing success. Many people posted things they did to help us move towards that north star on a daily or weekly basis. A quick estimate is that there have been close to 1,000 key things posted - that is a tremendous amount of effort and only captures a fraction of what we all collectively accomplish. I want to give a shout out to all the people that are encouraging people on this thread. Kind words go a long way. Thank you!
Strengths and Weakness Survey Summary
Close to 100 of you took your time to fill out a survey to help us better understand our strengths and weaknesses. @heather225 has summarize them below. Thank you Heather!
(from Heather)
Hi, everyone!
From the results of the site-wide survey, we have gathered that the community sees our strengths in being an anonymous platform with round-the-clock 24/7 volunteers to provide emotional support to anyone in need. The community values these features: 1-1, GS, the discussions, the Q&A column, the Growth Path, Self-Help Guides, and the many opportunities to explore leadership roles. Were also hearing 24/7 moderation has had a positive impact on the community. Were so glad the Mod Programs helping fill in room coverage and nurture the safe, supportive environment we treasure.
We have also critically reviewed and absorbed your input on what our current weaknesses are. We recognize the ongoing issue that is listener quality and will be problem-solving ways to improve training and reduce dropped chats. The forum will also be getting some much-needed love too in terms of engineering assistance, so look forward to that! The community has expressed concerns about communication and a desire to maintain a rapport with us (admin/staff). We hope these regular monthly updates will help bridge that gap.
Lastly, feedback! Youve asked, where can we submit feedback? You can send feedback regarding the site, changes, etc. through the Help Center and Customer Support will make sure we see it!
Theres a lot to do, and although our team is small at the moment, it is also robust, and we are dedicated to collaborating with the community as closely as possible in all future changes. All your contributions lay the building blocks to a better Cups. Thank you for caring about each other! - H
Community Leadership Calls
We had a great call with the forum team. Cris joined the forum team call. We have a shared understanding of short and long-term fixes that we can make to help the forum experience become a lot better (e.g., ways of quickly identifying spam). Look for more updates here soon.
We also had an ambassador call. I was able to join for the first time since 2016. We talked about our north star goal, efforts that are already underway, and how we can better support teams so we can both have fun and multiply our impact. Look for more updates on this front in the new year!
Special Projects
One theme we are also hearing is that there are a lot of people that want to help in ways that are consistent with their strengths, but might not fit into one of our leadership tracks. @Heather225 posted on special projects - which is a new recognition/badge - that indicated that we can move beyond tracks and plug people in in unique ways. We are doing more thinking on this this month and early next and will have an update soon.
Updates from Obs!
--Brought and shared the idea of One Room, 24 Hours with the community. We ran the polling of room preferences and based on mutual preferences, launched the trial on Dec 09, 2019! We will be reaching out to gather feedback on how the idea doing and what improvements we can do to make it better! To learn more about the trial, please check here!
--Introduced Submit a request to open/close support rooms to have an efficient way to manage rooms as per the community needs without much stress and hassle. Read more about the update here!
--Reviewing and processing pending applications of all the roles related to Group Support.
--Started Group Support High Fives to appreciate and give recognition to the efforts and contributions of everyone in the community. If you want to appreciate someone for their good work or support, please do share here!
--To ease the process of unlocking Listener Community Room, we brought up the new criteria!
For more Group Support Updates, please find them here!
Updates from Hope!
--Sub-communities overall structure and engagement was reviewed by the sub-community and forum leadership team to identify areas of improvement, some areas of forum and sub-communities needed added support and to provide that an initiative was made to merge some of these areas with sub-communities that have an active leadership team. You can read the announcement post here! Moreover, the team onboarded a new community mentor leader
--The Forum Leadership Team had been working on making the forum supporter trainings simpler and more time-efficient which led to the trialling of form-based forum supporter training. The trial is still ongoing with positive results so far. Additionally, the forum ambassadors connected with the admin team to be the voice of the community in discussing various aspects of the forums.
--The Internship Project Introduced three new listener quality based electives now available to be chosen as an elective by the community track interns. 19 more interns graduated from the Internship since the last community update. One more intern teen star joined the Internship Team. Lastly, minor changes were made to the Internship application to provide more clarity to the applicants in terms of Internship Track selection.
--On the teen side, eventful Mondays came into being! a weekly session to hear feedback/concerns and to discuss important issues like boundaries and safety in the teen community. The participants propose the topic of discussion and the most popular vote is picked for the next weeks discussion agenda. Additionally, the teen community joined hands in supporting activity in the teen listener room to ensure a better support system for teen listeners.
Closing
We still have plenty of time left in this month and will accomplish more items, but I wanted to get a second update posted before too long. I understand that this is a lot of info. These updates will likely continue to be long as we want to err on providing more info rather than too little. We welcome your thoughts and feedback on the above. Thank you all for being an important part of our community and for all of the hard work and smart efforts in moving things forward. We are doing good and important work!
Happy Holidays!
Glen, Heather, Hope, and Obs
Thanks for the update! It was very informative and i hope we can reach the community goals hehe 
@AddictedTealover98 thank you! and I'm sure we will meet the goals. One step at a time :D
@GlenM Awwww you have used my profile tagline! 
Listening .... One Step At A Time
@GlenM
Thank you Glen for communicating the vision! This sounds very exciting!
I had only a couple of comments.
Under Culture Comment-I'm glad that you can see this part working in the 7 cups environment. I'm glad you see and feel the strengths because this is what my intentions are, to be apart of this side of things. 
Under duplication of work-I can attest to that. I have wasted so much time seeking help from multiple entities/people but yet no resolution to my particular problem that I have had. It has been a waste of others peoples time when it feels like everyone is what I refer to as "passing the trash". It feels bad to be that "trash" that everyone keeps passing along because I imagine in the broader scope of things, it really isn't all that important to day to day operations. But it's important to me, so it would feel good for someone to say "if it's important to you, then it is important to me, because I care about your feelings and your progress here on this site". And....because I feel that I do have a role here, and I am a part of those Three 3 Things, I'm small, I'm new, but this particular experience has made me feel smaller and that no one is really listening to me. Given the right person to plug in, and hear me, this could be a situation that, I imagine would be taken care of in a matter of moments. I have walked away from it now feeling like "you get what you get, and you don't throw a fit". I have exhausted myself explaining it all, multiple times, but yet no resolution. This is something that could very well happen to me again and to other listeners here. But I don't have the confidence any more to tell fellow listeners to report it to community@7cups because I'm feeling as if there is no value there.
Just wondering, who is Cris?
I guess under team and community. No over arching North Star or goals that WE are all working towards. I can certainly see what you are saying there. Because maybe people aren't "feeling it sometimes". We all do have a common goal and this is to help members. This is truly our North Star! I'm thinking this is the thing that does bring us all together, under the 3 categories that you listed. These are the ties that bind. This is really what it's all about! Wasn't this the whole beginning, the inception of 7 cups, love one another, help one another. There is alot of things that go into that and one of those is supporting listeners to support the members.....ahhhh, trickle down.
I wouldn't know how to phrase it differently, I guess If you aren't a part of the solution, then you are only part of the problem. I don't want to be that person but maybe it will take brighter minds to figure it out. My thoughts, the verbiage on Team vs. Community. This doesn't feel like WE statements, our commonality, the one great big North Star and that we are all trying to hitch our little wagons to!
Not sure if it helps, but these are some of the reasons that I feel the "distance" that you speak of. But I'm trying, none the less.
Thank you OG for giving us all a platform to help others. Thank you for creating jobs. Thank you for caring. Merry Christmas to you and yours! And you know what, it's all going to be okay my friend! *hugs*
@SparkyGizmo - thanks for your post! Let me check with CMs on the item you addressed. We definitely do not want anyone to feel like any issues/items they have to address are just trash to be passed along. That is the furthest thing from our intention.
Yes, to further clarify, the definite north star is compassion and that being expemplifed through caring for one another. The goal here was to focus us more on that process of caring through quality, safety, and engagement. I believe we can all work towards that together - our collective goal is to care for one another through a quality, safe, and engaged environment. Perhaps that is a better way of saying it?
Thank you for the hard work across the platform. And, yes, in the immortal words of Bob Marley - everything is going to be alright!
@GlenM
I love this place! I believe in it! I guess in reference to my profile page, "I believe" and so I want to keep to all of those words that I put on that profile page and so as for little ole' me, these are the standards that I will hold myself to. I want to be highly self governed here, I want to be trust worthy and I want to be helpful! I believe that kindness matters always and if I don't do that around here, I want someone to call me out on it!
OG, thank you for hearing me and thank you for "seeing me". I haven't done oh so very much in relation to the other things people have done. I know this, but you appreciate me anyway. But I have to start somewhere. And I really do feel this sense of community wrapping their arms around me, helping me, encouraging me and also expecting great things of me to come.
I want to take more chats and lots of them. I'm worried about doing it in a guarded fashion that isn't necessary at all and would be silly and fruitless anyway. I want to have confidence in this system that has been promised to me. I stay within in the rules and the frame work that 7 cups has set forth. I believe in those and I agree with all of it! For me, there is no issue, no problem, except for this "thing" that has somehow flown underneath the radar that someone else, clearly does not understand the rules of engagement. It's not a great way to start. I want to have the confidence of being supported and also have the confidence to pass along community@7cups to help other listeners to be supported as well.
They are in the LSR all of the time, fearful of disengaging with the member, politely ending the chat, passing along suicide.org, passing along the crisis resources, explaining that they can't stay in the chat because they are being abused, for fear that a negative review will come along anyway. It's just the rules! These are the 7 cups rules!
@SparkyGizmo
Thank you team and specifically thank you @Hope. Thank you for "seeing" me and thank you for finding resolution to the problem for me! It feels great to move forward and have the freedom to help others that are deserving of every ones time!
@GlenM
Thank you so much! For me today, there is resolution! The issue stunted my growth as a listener, moving away from chats because of feeling fearful. I love working across the entire platform and now feel the confidence to engage in taking member chats which is what originally brought me here! I do see the value in all of of the areas! I ended up loving them all. Time to roll up the sleeves and get back to work in that area too. I try to see the positives! My take away today and a moment of gratitude: thank you @Hope and thank you @GlenM. I think I slipped through a lot of cracks, but at the end of the day, I have been heard and the system worked! Time to move along and hopefully to moments of greatness! I will continue to do my very best!
Thank you @GlenM @Heather225
Lucy2
@GlenM
Thank you for the update! It is great to be able to see all the progress we have made in the short period of a month. It goes to show that step by step one does indeed walk far. This has only been possible through collaboration with the listeners and members of this wonderful community. A big shout-out to all ambassadors, community leaders, listeners and members that contribute so much and take these steps with us and help drive this community forward. You rock!
Thank you for the update and for everything you do for our community! @Glen safe travels up to Massachusetts with the family. Happy Holidays!
@GlenM Thanks for the update!
The Biggest Issue for me and has been since the change is the Group Chatrooms... I am a huge fan of group chatrooms and the amount of members that were in them that are not now.. I know changes were made for a reason but as a Global Mod who loves the rooms it honestly breaks my heart to see the rooms so low in attendance and I come on everyday and go to each room and I open rooms and see the majority are Listeners..
People have left the site and are not coming back and many are still leaving because of the group chatrooms..
What can be done to bring people back to site other than forums ? I am not trying to cause any waves just trying to figure out a way to bring people back and not make it so hard to access the rooms that we do have ..People love to chat so this is really something that is so important for the members and even for all those that are room supporters and group mods ,global mods , teams etc.. Safety is important I get that I do.. also the lack of Mods getting out into the group chatrooms
Thanks once again for the updates and the hard work that everyone is putting in..
I am just a person who loves seeing people out in the Group Chatrooms..
Listeners are having to deal with people who are mad due to the closing of the rooms so people are getting in line to chat in 1-1 but they are doing it to abuse the Listeners because many of them are mad and believe that the Listeners are to blame. The are also becoming Listeners to be able to contact one another and abusing the role.
The site still has so much to offer and is full of info and help and is so greatly appreciated.. so Please know what you have done to make a place for people to come to is so awesome Glen so Thank you once again.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year !!
@GlenM Brilliant post. I was looking out for this update. It is wonderful to read and to see all the inspirational work that is being done. And I am so pleased that Quality, Safety, and Engagement are top of the list. I am very passionate about the quality teams, and safety issues are something that feature very high on the list of new listeners questions that they need support with.
Obs, Hope, and Heather make an awesome team. They are approachable, professional and fast and efficient. Also as as small team they listen and then act which makes changes quicker and easier to implement.
Well done everyone!
Listening .... One Step At A Time
@GlenM
This is such a great update. This should be a monthly thing. It kinda makes me feel like this is actually a job rather than volunteer work and that's super cool :D
I feel sorry for thr state, where 7 Cups is right now. It feels very cold and unfamiliar now. The general atmosphere is very different. I would say that this side is almost dead for me :(
I like the fact, that the mod is present in the room. I witnessed many misused chats.
On the other side, I miss the goup chats very much. I'm scared of every new notification, because most of the updates are killing the old 7Cups and making it more and more unfriendly for me.
@GettingUp It was literally my source of interaction and comfort from solitude. These days everything is gone and it gets harder and harder to talk to the people I have known for 2 years now or even new people. I hope the management has a change of heart and opens rooms again. As of now, its all empty and no rooms show up. It definitely gives off a cold and lonely vibe.
@LexIris
Any time you need a listening ear I am available. I may not respond immediately but once my heart tells me the way to help I will respond in the best way I can.